#also the research fucked i actually understood what was happening. so many research articles im like

[southislandwren]

fuck i just proofread my friend's research so she could submit it to a journal and i forgot how much i love proofreading :((

[twopoppies]

Firstly No pressure to read any of the below it’s just a lil rant after I ended up on the wrong side of tumblr!! ( + I have ADHD and i forgot my meds lol so its a bit disoriented and all over the place) and no response necessary unless you want to!

Oh god I accidentally ended up on the wrong side of tumblr....never ever ever ever again, I went back so fastttt lol im laughing at myself rn for how quickly i clicked away from disgust

i ended up on a blog that stalks u and some other larries and says absolutely atrocious things abt louis (I can send u their @ if u'd like so u can block them) and fully bought the stunt bs happening rn and it was horrible obvs but like i just do not understand like it was so creepy gina and im just so disgusted bc why? yk?

like u were not joking abt anti's actually being obsessed with larries - like half this person's blog was talking abt you and amy and i was just so shocked cause why??? like mate come on what the actual f? get a life please?? (im quite new so im like just now realising how insanely weird and obsessed these anti's are)

Also it was just an overall eye opener for multiple things:

Starting with that 1. the way 1DHQ and 1D Management managed to alienate larries actually worked and i like knew but truly doing a proper deep dive and seeing multiple blogs hate on larries and like obsessively stalk us was insane?? Like they truly believe everything they’re being fed???

Side Note: Lowkey feeling very lucky to have had the education i have because even before i even joined this fandom i believed partially none of the relationships in the news bc like i knew abt this industry and how it worked yk? i mean its logic? i have so many mates that arent even in the fandom that know i am in the fandom and texted me when the articles started rolling out calling it out for what it was: A PR stunt

Hell someone i know whom i had never even talked abt fandom stuff/stunt stuff fully texted me making a joke out of it!!! like people who aren’t even in our fandom can see it and its just insanely surprising that if they can why cant the antis?? im just a bit shocked rn

both from 1. finding someone who actually believes in this stunt and 2. multiple blogs that fully commit their time to stalking u and other larries and once again i knew but fully seeing it

YK AT FIRST I WAS LIKE IS THIS A JOKE I DIDNT BELIEVE IT GINA I THOUGHT SOMEONE WAS PULLING MY LEG OR THIS PERSON WAS IDK BEING SARCASTIC AND HAD A MESSED UP SENSE OF HUMOUR but ye anyway

It made me realise that 1DHQ knew what the fuck they were doing when they were trying to alienate larries from the rest of the fandom, once again i am feeling extraordinarily grateful to have grown up with an education where i was literally taught to never trust anything and to always think things thru using logic - “does it makes sense to you? if not find out why, there usually a reason behind everything” my yr 9 english teacher used to say smth like that all the time and it just never left me bc she was always teaching us to judge everything and to take every piece of news we read entertainment or otherwise with a grain of salt and to always if we’re gonna give someone else our opinion or spread this information do our research (its what i am when i say i feel lucky to have had the education i have had)

Eye Opener 2: Anti’s are fully standing y’all u were 100% correct this is some next level stan behaviour if i’ve ever seen some, you’re famous gina!!

It is while surprisingly to realise that anti’s fully believe these things, more surprising to see how they treat larries bc why on earth would u treat any other human being this way??? like dont get me wrong they’re horrible ppl and i fully felt like sending them a message telling them exactly that but i would never bc i just dont want to make another person feel bad abt themselves even if they are that shitty of a person and it was very tempting

I just would like to understand why they feel the need to do this? like why hate on a whole other person? for what believing smth diff to u? having a difference of opinion? how tf are they gonna make it when they get a job??? like??? do u know how often i run into a person with a different opinion then me? it shouldn’t be that big of a deal! we should still be able to be friends with antis! but we’re not - not for lack of trying btw!! they’re just so mean and rude??? when i was in other fandoms when someone believed different things there was never this much hatred at someone for it!! hell there was barely any bc it was understood that it was normal to have diff opinions abt things and i just am truly fascinated by these ppl i swear they remind how stupid the human race can sometimes be not for what they believe (altho ngl a lil of that too) but for how they treat other ACTUAL human beings with different opinions to them

Eye Opener 2.5: Some people need lives, man like they proper do need lives and something to do maybe a hobby or smth? just like a life they need to get one of those and actual live it

and Eye Opener 3: I already felt this way but like even god damn stronger now you deserve a formal apology from both 1DHQ and the universe

and until we get that u deserve amazing things coming from the boys on your bdays to make up for it

Lastly Gina I hope you didn't read thru all that bc I couldn’t even read it over and thus sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes and I would also like to say that I love your blog and everything about you! you’re an absolute angel and one of the kindest ppl I have ever had the pleasure of well not meeting but stumbling across, you truly make this fandom a much much much better place with your presence (I shudder to think of it without u) that said if you ever need to take breaks or leave Im sure you already know but you should 100%

You first!!! Always! :)

Have a good day Gina, I hope its an absolutely amazing one!

Hi darling. LOL! Reading this was like talking with my kids when they don't take their ADHD meds. Lots of excited thoughts!! I loved it.

And yeah, that blog and their 4 followers are really... not well. But you're very right. 1DHQ made this fandom a breeding ground for people to hate larries and to think it's something Harry and Louis would both approve of. It's gross.

The gaslighting here is powerful, so thank goodness for fans like you who know to question what they're told and to look at things with logic and to do their best to see through their own biases.

Thank you for all the sweet words and your offer to kick butt (in your other message). I really appreciate it!

[bi-dazai]

@ leftists saying that “no one died at tiananmen” - you have no idea what the fuck youre talking about and you need to shut up

the fact that you believe that it is “capitalist” or “trotskyist” propaganda that protesters were killed under deng xiaoping’s china (you probably dont even know who that is) is just disgusting. if you took five seconds to look past social media and read some actual research by credited historians and human rights activists you’ll find that, yes, actually, china does have and has had some pretty damn dark atrocities on their hands in the past few decades. 

im going to cover the very basics, going from an in-depth study i did into the massacre two years ago that took up half of my final year of high school. for reference i received a very high grade on this project, however i will be looking back at my sources and not at my essay itself in order to keep bias out. however it’s also important to know that you can access every one of the sources im going to use without even a university tertiary papers allowance, since i went to a public school which had no subscription of any kind to a paper database, and any papers and academic journals i would have to raid the internet for or pay for out of pocket. 

this post, despite being the basics of the situation, is also fairly long. you know why? this is a complicated fucking situation with a lot of elements at play here to understand. funny that, that you cant actually understand this kind of event by looking at a bunch of youtube videos talking about it from a political perspective without actually understanding what the fuck happened. huh.

on sourcing

this post isnt an essay. im not going to use an academic standard of reference or neutrality here. what i will do is occasionally link to some good articles throughout the essay and list all sources at the end of the post. understand that all facts and statements made in this post are from verifiable and creditable academic sources which i have evaluated, including evaluating the author of second-hand sources from a leftist perspective.

1) student protest in china

student protest is a pretty staple aspect of chinese culture and has been for a while. im not chinese myself, and im not a scholar of chinese history, but student protest has been described in many texts to have precipitated much of 20th century china’s development, one example being the student-led may fourth movement of 1919 which led to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party.

the tiananmen square protests were a series of protests which constituted, in significant amounts, university students. the history of modern, communist china is known to rest on university students, and student activisim was embraced and encouraged by mao (read the below point). for the chinese government to turn so brutally on that protest is extremely telling of a shift in doctrine and attitude, and makes the tiananmen square one of the most important moments in demonstrating the modern state of china’s relationship with criticism and protest, as well as its roots.

2) mao vs deng xiaoping

i understand that a lot of leftist ‘hesitation’ to believe that the chinese government massacred children in the late 1980s comes from the leftist appreciation for mao zedong. in the 1960s china began to shift back into a class system, and in response mao created the ‘Red Guard’, which was basically him encouraging students to follow his ideals and criticise the rise of old bourgeois and bureaucratic habits. mao didn’t want a class system reoccurring and he understood that communist china had been raised on the shoulders and hard work of chinese university academics and students. 

i just want to point out that the tiananmen square massacre happened in 1989. mao zedong died in 1976. mao zedong had been dead for over a decade when it happened.

the man in charge of china when mao zedong died was deng xiaoping, who was known for being extremely critical of mao’s followers and had a militaristic attitude and foundation - in fact, he was known for having a fair few military ties. deng xiaping fully succeeded mao by 1978, and became known for enabling further chinese economic freedom (which led to the class system returning at a much greater rate; however also proposed greater freedom to criticise the government in theory - in theory. yeah that didnt happen). deng xiaoping also put into effect the infamous one child policy (which pushed families with more than one child into further poverty and encouraged parents to abandon female babies). deng xiaoping also executed thousands of criminals in an attempt to curb crime rates. 

i could go all day into deng xiaoping’s reign over china. there were other dark effects of his rule - lower wages for academics; a widening gap between rich and poor; extreme corruption; and inflation that soared on food prices in the mid-1980s which led to many poor chinese citizens starving. this man was, to put it simply, evil. to associate him with mao at all is ridiculous. even time magazine noticed how different china had become - the september 26 1983 cover headline was literally “banishing mao’s ghost: deng xiaoping”.

he was not mao zedong. if your taking sides with the chinese government and trying to see this from a “capitalist propaganda” perspective is because youre a maoist, then youre clearly misunderstanding who was in charge here. even before mao died he was losing power while deng xiaoping was gaining it through his military ties. the 1970s and 80s was a period of rapid transformation into hell in china. the china of the 50s and 60s is extremely different from that of the late 80s.

3) the democracy movement

the protest in early june 1989 was part of a greater student movement that had been carrying on and picking up fervour throughout the mid-to-late 1980s in china. majorly comprised of university students and academics, it sought to oppose the blaring issues and evils of deng xiaoping’s rule. protestors had been filling tiananmen square even in early 1987, their reach spanned many cities and protests often reached one million people.

the democracy movement, as it was called [there was also the peoples liberation army but the democracy movement is the overarching movement], criticised the lack of communication between protestors and the communist party, unemployment, wage gaps, and demanded democracy. the movement was tolerated, however, with little to no violent opposition. this peaceful attitude cannot be accredited to deng xiaoping - many historians have credited this to the influence of general secretary hu yaobang who was dismissed in 1986 for being too permissive. 

throughout the late 1980s and especially in 1989, the protests began to heat up and non-academic chinese citizens began to also participate. in mid-april 1989 hu yaobang died, and the catalyst for a massive intensification of the protests began. tiananmen square is considered the centre of political power in beijing - a short time after hu yaobang’s death around 600 students and teachers laid a wreath for him in the square. many others in the following days also laid wreaths for him, and the demands of the democracy movement were again enunciated.

4) the massacre lead-up

over the next few months thousands of students occupied tiananmen square, frequently holding hunger strikes while attempting still to communicate with the deng xiaoping-led communist party. millions across the country were in solidarity.

on may 20th 1989, martial law was declared against the protests, and troops began to be stationed across beijing. millions of protestors still turned up, and it was reported many troops at this period refused to shoot the protestors despite their orders.

a statue of the goddess of democracy was also raised in tiananmen square by protestors, and, ahead of a visit from mikhael gorbachev, a hunger strike also took place. these protests continued every day and gained immense amounts of support from the chinese public.

[photo credit shelly zang]

5) the massacre

by early june the protests were still going strong and still gaining traction fast. on the night of june 3rd, the troops stationed in beijing began to mobilise, and this time the soldiers obeyed martial law. the troops were heavily armed and deng xiaoping did not hesitate to order the army to deploy military vehicles such as tanks to clear out the protesters using the violence he had used when he had executed criminals. 

if youre unwilling to believe, for some reason, blood was shed, then here: a news site by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public news service (which is fairly left-leaning, especially in its journalists), which summarises the massacre and includes many, many pictures of the violence, suffering, and bloodshed. MASSIVE TW FOR VIOLENCE, DEATH, BLOOD, GORE

with the sheer volume of fleeing protesters and the entire force of the chinese army being pushed down on the beijing populace, many soldiers did not know or had no involvement in the killing - many, upon learning of it, immediately flew the white flag and fled. 

6) the death count

to this day, the count of the amount of civilians and protestors who died in the massacre is unknown. it will probably never be known. 

in 1989 and 1990 amnesty international human rights investigators collected testimonies from witnesses and attempted to calculate the death toll. testimonies concluded that it was highly likely that, in the early morning hours of june 5th, the army collected the bodies lying on the street, piled them into heaps, and burned them. if the death count was counted then it is likely it will never be released and/or never be able to be confirmed. it was also reported that several hundred people, mainly protesters now in hiding, were executed between june and august. in 1990 thousands were still in jail for their participation and, at this point in time, ill hazard a guess that theyre either still in there or are dead. the surviving leaders of the democracy movement fled the country almost immediately.

a safe estimation of the death toll, with both physical and witness testimony, puts the death toll of soldiers at perhaps a dozen, and the death toll of civilians between 400-several thousand. blood and burned tanks stained the streets of beijing for a time after the massacre, and a recreation of a bloodied sect of street remains in wroclaw, poland, as a response in solidarity with the victims.

this is the memorial. this is a recreation of an actual piece of street. what you see is a bicycle, toppled and crushed, and the heavy tracks of a tank. the red paint - that’s the blood of a massacred chinese civilian.

7) general current status

now going through a lot of my old notes, i found two very good slides of quotes i made during my note-taking period that just about sums this section up:

[full sources will be at the end of the post]

8) leftists and my interpretation

i know that it can all seem that the perception of the chinese government as bad and scary and terrible is all a capitalist propaganda piece to demonise china. some of this perception is, and a lot of this perception also falls into orientalism. however the government that was created and left by deng xiaoping is nothing short of evil, and taking its side as a stance against capitalism when the tiananment square massacred a whole heap of pro-maoist activists is...well. it’s uneducated and idiotic. its also highly offensive because these are people who would align with leftism. these people were killed by a violent, classist government that sought to become capitalism, all for peacefully attempting to negotiate openly with deng xiaoping’s policies. they were massacred, hunted down, imprisoned. there is nothing else to say here, no controversy. denying this happened is along the lines of holocaust denial and it disgusts me to see my fellow leftists engaging in such right wing conspiratorial thought. 

please, please reblog this. i think a lot of people understand vaguely what happened but dont truly understand. and while im not suggesting im an expert - all ive done is provided a basic summary with some extra explanation from a leftist perspective - and chinese history isnt even my forte - i would prefer to teach those what i know and open up discussion from proper chinese history scholars and chinese leftists themselves.

i also hope that this gives perspective to the current student protests in hong kong, and why student protests being shut down signals the proper end of the chinese communist era and china’s shift to totalitarian capitalism and fascism. 

i would love for some chinese leftists, historians, and scholars to add in if you feel.

SOURCES/FURTHER READING:

Books, Papers, Newspaper Articles:

Amnesty International (1990) China: The Massacre of June 1989 and its Aftermath, 17th March, 1990

Harding, H. (1990) The Impact of Tiananmen on China’s Foreign Policy, National Bureau of Asian and Soviet Research, December 1990

Kristof, N.D. “A Reassessment of How Many Died in the Military Crackdown in Beijing”. The New York Times, 21st June, 1989.

Laidlaw, R. (1994) China: A Documentary History, MacMillan, South Melbourne

Richelson, J.T., and Evans, M.L. (1999) Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History [Online] Available at: https://nsarchive.gwv.edu.BSAEBB/NSAEBB16/, Accessed 1st August, 2017

Laidlaw, R. (1994) China: A Documentary History, MacMillan Education Australia, South Melbourne

Amnesty International (1990) China: The Massacre of June 1989 and its Aftermath, 17th March 1990

 Summaries and Discussions:

Leslie, T. (2014) Tiananmen Square massacre: Look back on how the crackdown unfolded [Online] Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-04/how-the-tiananmen-square-massacre-unfolded/5496454, Accessed 8th August 2017

Nathan, A.J. (2009) The Consequences of Tiananmen [Online] Available at: www.resetdoc.org/story/00000001371, Accessed 1st August 2017

Ping, H., translated by Robertson, M. (2015) How the Tiananmen Massacre Changed China, and the World [Online] Available at: www.chinachange.org/2015/06/02/how-the-Tiananmen-massacre-changed-china-and-the-world/, Accessed 8th August, 2017

Rayman, N. (2016) 6 Things You Should Know About the Tiananmen Square Massacre [Online] Available at: https://time.com/2822290/Tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-time/, Accessed 1st August 2017

*i couldnt seem to find the “wang” source in my reference list however i do vaguely recall it being quoted amongst one of the above sources. if anyone is curious ill see if i can properly sniff it out